ROSEMARY ABBOTT | Politics
NO CANE, NO GAIN
Greymouth local Barry Briggs, 81, has welcomed ACT’s new classroom behaviour policy, but says modern teachers still have a long way to go before they match what he experienced growing up.
Briggs said ACT’s proposal to give teachers clearer legal backing to remove seriously disruptive students from classrooms sounded “pretty reasonable” , but nothing compared to the days when discipline came with fewer forms and more wooden objects.
“Back in my day it was reasonable force, then the cane outside,” Briggs laughed while enjoying a quiet afternoon at the local pub.
“None of this ‘please leave the classroom and go to a supervised learning environment’ business. If you were causing trouble, you were marched outside and caned before you could realise what you’d done,” he recalled fondly.
ACT’s policy, announced by leader David Seymour, MP Karen Chhour and candidate Paul Henry, would give teachers explicit legal power to direct seriously or persistently disruptive students to leave the classroom and move to a staffed supervised space.
The party says the move is aimed at giving teachers more confidence to deal with behaviour issues, with Paul Henry describing some classroom troublemakers as “little shits” who needed to be addressed if education standards were to improve.
Briggs said he understood the concern with “little fuckin shits”, having witnessed generations of students pushing boundaries, although he believed today’s system had become “a bit too complicated”.
“In my day, the behaviour management process was simple. If you misbehaved you were whacked 10 times with a cane. You didn’t make the same mistake twice, ha ha ha ha.”
More to come.
